Grief and Finding the Right Support with Restfully Founder Sarah Baldwin

When someone dies, the grief is only part of what families are carrying. Along with the emotional pain often comes a long list of decisions, paperwork, phone calls, family dynamics, and practical tasks that can feel impossible to manage while you're mourning. 

In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly, death doula and funeral celebrant Jill McClennen talks with Sarah Baldwin, founder of Restfully, about why navigating loss shouldn't have to be so overwhelming and how better support can help people focus on what matters most.

Sarah shares the deeply personal experience that inspired Restfully. After her mother died from lung cancer, she found herself facing the same confusing and fragmented system that so many families encounter after a death. Although her mother's death had been expected, nothing truly prepared her for the emotional weight or the practical responsibilities that followed. Drawing on her background in finance and operations, Sarah realized there had to be a better way to connect people with trustworthy resources during one of the most difficult times of their lives.

Together, Jill and Sarah explore the reality that grief doesn't begin only after someone dies. 

Anticipatory grief can be just as profound, and even when families know a death is coming, they often feel unprepared for everything that follows. They discuss how logistical demands—finding hospice, planning a funeral, cleaning out a home, managing paperwork, or coordinating services—can leave little room to simply grieve.

A major focus of the conversation is the importance of personalized grief support. Sarah explains Restfully's four grief personas—Open Heart, Quiet Anchor, Steady Hand, and Seeker—and how each reflects a different way people process loss and seek help. Rather than assuming everyone grieves the same way, these personas encourage a more compassionate, individualized approach to communication and support.

Sarah also shares how Restfully is expanding beyond educational resources into practical tools designed to make help easier to find. The platform is developing a vetted vendor directory and a "solution database" that allows people to search by the problem they're trying to solve—whether they need a funeral home, hospice provider, death doula, estate attorney, home cleanout service, grief counselor, or another type of support. They also discuss scholarship opportunities and other efforts to make these services more accessible to people who might otherwise struggle to afford them.

The conversation touches on the challenges of building a mission-driven business in the end-of-life space. Sarah talks openly about balancing the desire to provide meaningful support with the realities of sustaining an organization financially. Jill and Sarah also discuss how grief often shows up in unexpected ways, including anger expressed online, family conflict, or emotional reactions that may not immediately be recognized as grief at all.

Throughout the episode, both emphasize that there is no single "right" way to grieve. People need different kinds of information, different kinds of support, and different timing. Meeting people where they are—with practical resources, compassion, and without judgment—can make an enormous difference during one of life's hardest experiences.

Whether you're planning ahead, supporting someone who is seriously ill, grieving the loss of a loved one, or simply interested in improving end-of-life care, this conversation offers thoughtful insights into making death and grief a little less overwhelming and a lot more human.

00:00 Death Connects Us

01:21 Meet Sarah Baldwin

02:15 What Is Restfully

02:49 Why She Started

05:55 Losing Her Mom

08:43 Clearing Space To Grieve

09:36 Unexpected Logistics Stress

12:27 Building The Team

13:21 Four Grief Personas

17:14 How The Personas Formed

20:37 Sitting With Unknowns

22:55 Death Work And Cultural Shift

25:27 Evolving Doula Roles

26:59 Grief Fuels Online Anger

31:40 Personal Grief and Triggers

34:05 Breaking Comment Loops

37:14 Rounding Up on People

39:15 Charging for Care Work

42:17 Restfully Solution Database

48:32 Where to Find Sarah

49:24 End of Life Planning Offer

https://www.restfullycare.com/

https://www.restfullycare.com/grief-personas

 sarah@restfullycare.com

Transcript

Sarah: [00:00:00] In the long term, death and how we grieve is actually the last thing that connects us all, and it's actually going to be kind of the thing that saves us from ourselves if we can connect ourselves with a better relationship to death. 

Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and funeral celebrant.

Here on my show, I have conversations that explore death, dying, grief, and life itself, with the hope of making these topics a little less intimidating and more approachable. My goal is to create a space where you can challenge what you think you know, learn something new, and feel more prepared for life's most difficult moments.

Today, I'm joined by Sarah Baldwin, founder of Restfully. Sarah shares how a career in finance and the death of her mother from lung cancer inspired her to create a company dedicated to helping people navigate the practical side of loss with trusted, vetted resources. We talk about why even an expected death can leave families [00:01:00] overwhelmed, how grief looks different from person to person, and why support should reflect those differences.

Sarah explains Restfully's four grief personas, how they're building tools to connect families with the right professionals and services, and why creating more space for people to simply grieve is so important. Thank you for joining me for this 

Sarah: conversation. 

Jill: Welcome, Sarah, to the podcast. Thank you for coming on today.

Can you just start me off, though? I don't even know where you are, where you're from. I don't really know anything about you other than a little bit about your business. So tell us a little bit about who you are. 

Sarah: So my name is Sarah Baldwin. I'm down in Sarasota, Florida. I've been living here since 2020, coincidentally moved right before the pandemic.

And I'm originally from the Northeast, from New England. And I think when I summarize myself, I kind of tend to be a overly happy person, optimistic, and I just really adore humans. Any opportunity to talk to other people like [00:02:00] you, like I said before we started recording, I feel like I already know you from some of the podcasts you've done.

So yeah, that's pretty much me in a nutshell. 

Jill: Awesome. Well, thank you for coming on. And yeah, my husband's from Florida originally, so I always like to talk to people who live down there. So your company is... Is it just called Restfully? Like, what's the full title of the company? 

Sarah: Yep. We're Restfully, and we're focused specifically on curating resources for people navigating end of life, grief, and loss.

Jill: My favorite topics. So that's great. And when did you start the company? 

Sarah: Restfully was started legally and formally last March, and it's been kind of an iteration of research and different conversations that I've been having with co-founders for a couple years now. 

Jill: And why did you start a company? I'm always curious.

It's not usually something that we are children and we're like, "I wanna have a company where I talk to people about death, and dying, and grief." Nope. So what brought you to [00:03:00] this work? 

Sarah: Absolutely. So in a weird way, I was kind of the little child who did always want a company. I was always a lemonade stand kind of person.

But by the time I had reached my 40s, I'd gotten to a point where I thought, "I'm not going to just do something just for the sake of doing it. If I'm gonna put my blood, sweat, tears, heart, soul, network, best friends, all the things into something which it takes to start a company, it has to be really tied to something I'm passionate about."

My background's actually in finance, so I spent the majority of my career up till now focusing on helping people navigating the ups and downs of the stock market and their own personal needs to access money and use money and save money, and I spent a lot of time talking about complicated topics with normal people and just trying to demystify it.

And so it may seem like a leap that now I'm in the end of life and grief space, but four years ago my mom died, and I realized that after that, [00:04:00] now I'm an expert in what it looks like to say goodbye to your mom because I had a front row seat to it. And maybe I should clarify, I don't know that I'd call myself an expert because I went through that experience, but I felt like I could talk to my friends and help my friends and explain some of that experience in a way that can help them.

And that just started to snowball, where someone else asked someone to talk to me because they were having a problem, and then some other friends that I had always kind of talked about working on a business together, they had said, "Hey, we should work on something together." They had actually experienced some loss, and so we looped all of us in.

And what really matters to us is that we don't have all the answers, but we're a collective of people who have a variety of backgrounds, a, a variety of opinions, a variety of cultures and religions and political opinions and all of those things. But the idea that really all of this boils down to is that if we all work together, we can make death a stage of life that we can support people in way better.

And at the moment, we kind of don't try collectively. We have [00:05:00] these unbelievable content creators. We have unbelievable doulas who are doing this every day in and out, medical professionals. But we're looking to curate it in a way that kinda anyone can access resources and find resources that have been vetted, so that's kinda why we all linked arms and why we're on this journey.

Jill: Yeah, and actually, so I have two questions. I'm gonna try to figure out how to maneuver around two questions. I am sorry to hear about your mom. Huge loss for somebody, no matter what age we are, but- Mm-hmm ... especially, you know, 40s, that's young. You know, you're not, you're not old. Yeah. And I'm sure your mother was not that old either, so I'm sorry about that.

Sarah: Thank 

Jill: you. And, you know, that experience, was it because of the challenges with that experience? Was it because of working with other professionals that made it easy? Like, what about that experience specifically made you kinda say, "You know, people need help, and I'm gonna be the person to help them"? 

Sarah: I- it's a really good question.

Actually, I haven't talked about it this way ever before, and- So [00:06:00] I'll say it this way because I think maybe there are people who can relate to this, which is my mom, who-- I- sweetest, best mom. I adore her. Like all people, we have our pros and cons, our best sides of us and worst sides of us. My mom was an, a really...

He was-- She was a smoker, so I have memories from a early childhood of saying, "Mom, please stop smoking. You're gonna have lung cancer one day. You're gonna have lung cancer one day." And then when the day came, and she's early 60s and she's not doing well, we take her to the hospital, and they were like, "She has lung cancer," right?

And in some ways, why I'm bringing this up is because I had really mentally prepared for this since I was a child. My mom had not ever really prioritized her health, including she was a smoker. And so when that happens, you think, "I'm prepared for this." I'm a prepared type of person. I like to prep and organize.

I'm a checklist person. And when that happened, you think, "Okay, I'm prepared for this." But you realize you're not [00:07:00] prepared for this, right? My life came kind of to a screeching halt for less than three months. We spent as much time with her as we can. While that was happening, we were emptying her apartment, and I'm one of four children.

All of us were kind of by her side. And in some ways it was the best case scenario. We had about 90 days with her of just intense time to make sure she absolutely knew we loved her. She absolutely knew we were there with her. And despite having this kind of understanding that my mom was likely to die of lung cancer one day, your heart's still not ready, and the structure that we put around grievers still doesn't help.

And so I had this moment a few years after where I thought- You know, that was terrible. That was heart-wrenching. That was beyond my wildest dreams, and it didn't need to be that hard. Some of the things that were really, really hard about saying goodbye to my mom were unnecessarily complicated, confusing.

What's this? [00:08:00] How does this happen? And an example that I use all the time is about three weeks before she died, so she's in very, very bad shape, I woke up in the middle of the night and just thought, "Oh, is there a medical study I should be getting her into?" And that's just a desperate ... I'm coming from a desperate place because I had never thought of that, and she was very, very unlikely eligible for any medical study at the state that she was in.

But it- it's just a to-do item that's coming through my head and thinking, "I should make sure that's covered." And there was fighting within my family, and my family's not really- Mm ... a fighting family. We don't really fight much, and we've since spent a lot of time talking about how we all grieve differently and why that was such a bizarre issue for us.

And so as the dust settled in whatever way that it can after you lose your mom, I just was really struck with this. It didn't need to be that hard. And if ... When someone dies, I say you get 100 item to-do list, but only one item on the to-do list [00:09:00] actually really, really, really matters, and that's grieve the person you've lost as much and often as you can.

So what we're set out to do is try to clear the space so people can really spend the space to grieve the way they want to. 

Jill: Yeah, you're right. It does not have to be as hard, and I feel like that's kind of like a common thing that I say just about end of life in general, is it doesn't have to be as hard and as traumatic as it often ends up being if we could prepare ourselves ahead of time, but we just don't.

And it's a variety of reasons why. I mean, even my uncle died recently, like couple days ago, and- Wow. Yeah. I mean, he was older, right? So it wasn't unexpected, but it was also not expected when it happened because hi- his heart just stopped, which is wonderful- Yeah ... actually. Like, if you're gonna go, that's kind of the way to go.

His wife died two years ago. I actually talked about her on my podcast. I was in the middle of recording an episode when I got the [00:10:00] call. Like, it was a whole thing. So it's not like he didn't know, right? Mm-hmm. That, like, i- the end was probably coming. Mm-hmm. And when I got to the house this weekend, his son was like, "So here's the box," you know, he holds up like the plastic box, where he was supposed to put everything.

Everything was supposed to be in this box. Oh, yeah. He's like- Empty ... "What do you think's in the box?" Yeah. Nothing. The divider's still in the plastic. You know, like nothing was in there. And thankfully, because he was fairly organized in general, it doesn't seem like it's- that difficult to find everything.

Mm-hmm. But it's still, when it's unexpected, you know, y- nobody was thinking- Mm-hmm ... that's what we were gonna do this past weekend. It was still not easy- Mm-hmm ... to find everything and get it together, and that just adds to the stress and the overwhelm that- Yeah ... people are feeling, when really they should just be able to feel their grief.

And we also don't really deal with grief well. I talked to one of my students today at Cathedral [00:11:00] Kitchen, where I still teach part-time, and she was talking about how... You know, and it's interesting, 'cause I think sometimes, like when I talk to people from other cultures and backgrounds and whatever else, I think sometimes they think, like, like this is like so different, you know?

And she was like, "Oh, you know, and my mom, she, you know, never really talked about death with us. Like, I wasn't allowed to go to any funerals." And I was like, "Yep, me neither." Like, same exact background. Mm-hmm. And she was talking about how different they all approach grief, right? Mm-hmm. Like in their family, 'cause like her younger sister really grieves.

Like a cat died. Mm-hmm. She cried and she cried- Mm-hmm ... and she cried. Where mom was like super uncomfortable and like shut the whole thing down, right? Yes. And like we don't have to do it that way. So I love that you're also trying to help kind of change, 'cause that's what we need is like- Uh-huh ... we need there to be all the different little areas, all the different little touch points that kind of are like spreading out into our culture that are gonna help change the way that we deal with death and grief.[00:12:00] 

But it's certainly not easy, 'cause people resist it so much. And you mentioned that like you have some partners and like you're all kind of doing things. 'Cause I, it's just me, right? It's like, it's me. Yeah. I do my thing, and I do the best I can, and then I also find other people that can do things that need to be done for my clients.

But like what does that look like for you? Like are you full-time working for the company, and like everybody else just kinda helps? Like how's that part work? 

Sarah: Yeah, I think with a lot of different projects like this, it ends up being so many serendipitous connections and relationships and things like that.

And the other thing I've found working in the end of life space is I really have been blown away, can't state this enough, how generous professionals in this space are with each other, with their resources, with their networks. The whole thing has been really, really unbelievable. And so yeah, we have a lot of people working on a lot of different things, and really the biggest one is we're [00:13:00] adding these features to our website.

One that we're adding this summer is a vendor database. So if you say you're in Sarasota, Florida, and you need to find a funeral planner who can help you, and you need to find someone who can empty out grandmother's house, like you can have all these people that have been vetted by us and they're resources that you know you can count on.

And to further your point about how we all grieve differently, one of the things that the team has worked on is this really big project researching different styles of grief and how different people grieve. And it's pretty common to hear about the five stages of grief. I'm less of an expert in that, although I have read a lot and I'm very familiar with it.

What we found was a personality type that at the moment where you're going through grief, if you get a big scary call, that we have kind of one of four ways that most people tend to default to. We often are a lot of these different things, but the first one we call is the open heart, and those people tend to emote and cry, and they tend to [00:14:00] find a lot of comfort in community.

The second one is actually called the quiet anchor. Those people prefer to process and grieve on their own timeline and in their own space. Sometimes those people actually prefer to not even think and talk about grief, and that's a common area for them. The third is what I am, which is called the steady hand, and we like to get stuff done.

I'm a checklist. Like, you need help planning stuff, I'm your girl. And then the fourth is called the seeker, and those are people who are kinda defaulting to looking for meaning to the big life's questions on what's happening, where did this person go, why are we here? They tend to look for spiritual and religious frameworks.

They all, each one of those four really, really matter, and if you think back to we're all in a tribe, at one point you can imagine that each of those would serve a really important purpose in a community. But we've broken things out into that way so that we can give very curated resources and advice in how to help those types of people, how to get help if you are those types of [00:15:00] people.

And one of the common examples I'll say is someone who's a seeker may often say stuff like, "Oh, they're in a better place," but if someone's not a seeker, that can feel like conflicting language for them. So we really break it out so if someone's a steady hand like me and they're logistics-based, it's actually not that helpful to say, "Let me know how I can help," because that's actually just another to-do list for them.

What would help someone like me is saying, "Hey, I'm dropping off dinner tomorrow unless you tell me otherwise. It'll be healthy. I'll bring enough for five people, and let me know if you have any dietary requests." That, that's really good. So one of the things we do, and why it takes such a team, is we're trying to make resources for every single type of those person at every different part of the loss cycle, and so that's why, yeah, I...

And I will say, couldn't do it without the team, and have absolute admiration for people who are holding it down on their own, because I know how much work goes into the stuff that no one sees. So thank you for all the content you make, because I'm sure [00:16:00] it's two full-time jobs, not just one. 

Jill: Oh, yeah. It is a lot.

It is a lot. And actually, yeah, so now that you're talking about your different, you know, avatars, whatever you wanna call them, I think I did take your quiz, actually. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did. So I did take your quiz on that, because I thought that was really interesting, and creating my own quiz is something that's on my list of things to do.

One of these days I will get it done. And part of the, I don't know, I wanna say, like, the intimidating part, I guess, like, the hard part is trying to really- create those different avatars, and, like, what they mean and what they would need, and how they would do things different. Mine wouldn't be for grievers.

I was thinking of doing one for end-of-life care plans. Mm-hmm. What type of planner are you, right? Mm-hmm. Because you're right. Like, I'm the type of person, I'm gonna have all the checklists. I'm gonna have everything written down. It's like I just need to do that. Mm-hmm. I function better when I do that. But that's not gonna be everybody, right?

So I've kind of thought about it, but there is so much that goes [00:17:00] into the different ways that people do things. Like, did you... How did you do it? Did you start with a personality test and kinda used that? Like, how did you come up with your different avatars and figure out who would need what type of thing?

Sarah: It started with a lot of research on how different people... And most good research starts with just who, who's around you, right? So my mom was one of eight, and then about a year after she died, one of my best friend's dad died. And so I had this clump of my family, m- my mom's siblings, my siblings, and then this other family that I had known for so long, and I started to say like, "Oh, she's behaving exactly like him, and he's behaving exactly like that."

And so just lots of iterations. We started with 12, and we were like, "Oh, that's too many," because it's true that everyone is... You could have infinite, right? Because no grief experience is exactly the same. But our idea was let's get it down to the most consistent four categories. It's also [00:18:00] very common, sometimes I'll say to people who are returning to work, I'm more of a quiet anchor at work because I tend to want to be a little more private at...

When my mom died, I didn't wanna be more, like, to-do list person at work. I mean, I'm that no matter what. But you bring up these different parts of you, however you're grieving. And so it's not a rigid you're this and you're not that, so much as this is kind of coming up for me. I'm in this stage like this.

And so it was lots and lots of research, and then since, we've done thousands of tests, and I'd love to know which one you are. 

Jill: I don't remember, actually. Okay. I, yeah, I don't know because- It's probably 

Sarah: our steady hand. 

Jill: Yeah. Like me. I feel like, yeah. I feel like that was it because I was definitely kind of like, "Oh, well duh, yeah."

Yeah. Of course. You know? Like I'm- Yeah ... and that's the cool thing about quizzes. As you're reading them, you should feel that way. Like, oh- Mm-hmm ... well, of course this is me. That totally makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. 

Sarah: And the other really sweet thing that happens, 'cause we get an alert on kind of our shared communication Slack when someone takes one, [00:19:00] and another really sweet thing that happens is we'll wake up in the middle of the night, and there are a lot of people who did it overnight, and it tends to be quiet anchors are just, like, by themselves probably grieving and really, you know, taking these quizzes.

So I just think of us as at different stages, all these different things, and really matters to me that we can try to s- meet people wherever they are to support them however they need. 

Jill: Yeah. It is, it's so important in this work to, you know, I think in some jobs, right, you show up and you kind of, like, tell people, like, "This is what you need to do," you know, and you kinda, like, direct it.

But in this type of work, it really is more showing up and figuring out what they need, and then still helping them, but it is more of this Awareness and observing and listening, because it is so different for everybody. And, you know, me showing up and just being like, [00:20:00] "Oh, well, you need, you know... Like, you're preparing for your mom to die.

You need-" Mm-hmm ... "to do X, Y, and Z." Mm-hmm. Well, maybe you don't need to do X, Y, and Z. Mm-hmm. You might need something totally different. Yes. And so that's a hard skill, in some ways, to learn when we, again, grow up in this culture of like if you don't show up confident with this like, "I know what you need," people view that sometimes as you not being the expert, you not knowing everything.

But honestly, we really shouldn't know everything in this work. We should learn as much as we help and teach people, and it's part of what I love about it, actually. 

Sarah: Yeah. That resonates with me a lot. And I think when you decide to kinda jump into the pool of professionally, full-time focusing on end of life and grief and grievers, you have to get really comfortable.

I've talked more about my mom because of this than I could have expected up until this started to become, like, a real business with real conversations. And I think one of the things for me that I had, and I still [00:21:00] work on it every day, is I, at the moment at least, don't have an answer to what happens to us when we actually die.

I respect and believe a lot of people have better answers to that than I currently have at the moment. For me, it's a fairly large, big question mark in my head, and I have to be really comfortable dancing around that big question mark of unknowns. And if you're not, it can be really energy-draining. But if you're forcing yourself to have an answer, forcing yourself to have the right advice, forcing yourself on, "There's one way to do this," I think y- the whole thing will come down like a crashing house of cards.

Because you just have to really get deeply centered with yourself. And it's one of the things that's been actually incredibly fulfilling about the work, is I just feel like it's centering me. It's reminding me. An example I can give you is we were putting on our website an obituary writer, and I was testing it over and over and over one day.

And so I [00:22:00] basically wrote my mom's obituary, like, 30, 40 times in a row on a random Tuesday afternoon. And that night, I was going to bed, and I was like, "Man, grief is sitting on me in such a big way. I feel exactly like when I was just moving through quicksand, like, slowly, brain fog, all of that. What is happening?"

I just had to s- oh, of course. I wrote my mom's obituary 40 times in a row. That's a bizarre situation. And so, okay, go back to centering. What did I do when I was in acute grief? Um, she had just died a few months ago. Went back to that. You know, stay in bed a little longer, give myself a little more space, and respect it because- I am, like I said, I'm a to-do list, drive, go, go, go, go kind of person, and it is a really good reminder to do the opposite to what can feel intuitive to balance yourself out.

Jill: And it's kind of making me think, no matter what somebody's political beliefs are, the [00:23:00] world is shifting and changing, especially in the United States. Like, we're going through a massive shift and a massive change, and I don't know what it's gonna look like on the other end. But there are a lot of people that are really hopeful that on the other end of this, and some people will call it death, right?

Mm-hmm. That we're, like, at the death phase before- ... the birth phase of, like, whatever's coming next. That whatever it is that comes next hopefully will be this, like, new era, this new way of doing things. And part of that will hopefully be that idea of leaving behind some of the structure that we're in now of the working constantly, the forcing ourselves constantly, ignoring our body, ignoring our needs, ignoring our grief, ignoring when we have babies.

Like, just working for the man, right? Working for the machine. Mm-hmm. Just being a cog in that, you know, machine that never stops. And so as you're talking about this idea, I'm like, yeah, you know, I [00:24:00] went through something similar where when I first became a death doula and I was, like, doing my training and, again, like, bringing up all this old grief and, like, reading so much about grief and reading about the worst fears that I have, right?

Mm-hmm. Of, like, my children dying, and especially now talking on the podcast to people where, like, they do, they have kids that die. Mm-hmm. And I put myself in these positions- Where I do sometimes get very uncomfortable, but I- Mm-hmm ... sit with the discomfort, but then afterwards- Mm-hmm ... I will sometimes have a reaction, have a day where I'll feel a little bit more tired.

I might need to go to bed a little bit earlier. And in the past, I would've just pushed through it. I would've been like, "No, but I still have work to do." And there's still times- Mm-hmm ... when that comes up, right? Mm-hmm. I have to like, kind of be like, "No, your work right now is to like rest and take care of yourself."

And so this death work has kind of helped me shift more into what I hope we can all kind of eventually- Mm-hmm ... get into. [00:25:00] And it's interesting, like I wonder if the two things are kind of happening simultaneously. Not I wanna say for a reason, 'cause then again, that kinda gets into like religion of like there's a reason for it all.

Which I don't know. Mm-hmm. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. But like we're seeing this growth in people talking more about death and dying and preparing for it, right? There's like definitely a wave coming, especially now, you know, thank you Nicole Kidman saying you want to be- Mm-hmm ... a death doula. Now like everybody and their mother knows who a death doula is or what a death doula is.

Uh-huh. While we're going through this period, it's like the two things are kind of happening together. Mm-hmm. And I just think that's kind of cool and it's kind of interesting and I hope we can all get to that place where we actually do listen to our bodies and go, "Yeah, I maybe need to rest now." 

Sarah: Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

And I think I was mentioning the big question mark about the big answers for me. Part of what I now consider my job is to think about that question mark [00:26:00] more and really dive into it, and there are people who are doing some of the most incredible work right now in our own backyards. Some of the examples that I've talked about are, you have religious framework doulas.

So I was on a podcast with a woman who helps people who are focused on the resurrection as part of their doula work. Incredible- Oh ... open-hearted- 

Jill: Interesting ... 

Sarah: profound. I spoke to a group of Jewish doulas, and they have the sweetest tagline, like, I think it was, "End of life Jewishly." And it's just, like, building in their cultures, which are some of the most beautiful

Sitting Shiva, I can talk about all day, like some of the most beautiful cultures. There are people doing some of the most incredible work on what actually happens. I was watching another podcast, and there was a neurophysicist who was talking about what actually happens. And I am here for the big wow. I have no idea, but obviously we're working and walking towards more knowledge and expertise, and there's really a place for all of us.

The other [00:27:00] thing your comment made me think about is when we did this big research study of all these different people online, one of the questions was, do you get in online fights? And do you, like, show up in online fights, like, whether it's on a news channel or on Twitter and things like that. And in that survey, we were also asking people, "Would you characterize yourself as currently grieving?"

And so the people who said, "Yes, I get in online fights," so in my head, these are, like, trolls, even though I don't wanna talk about these researchers, 'cause who knows what side. Maybe they're on the right side. I have no idea. But of the people who say, "Yes, I get in online fights," 91% of them said they are actively grieving acutely, like, right now grieving.

And so it is, in my opinion, a lens that we look out into the world. If you look out into the world and say, "Man, everyone hates each other. Everyone's mad at each other. There's... The online situation is just, like, [00:28:00] this cesspool of angry... You'll be eaten alive. You'll be shredded." Like, this is such a terrible thing, y- you...

That's what you feel. But I think what you're mentioning, and I'm seeing other people s- see this as well, and especially doulas and people who are working in the end of life space who are right at the front row seat, is it's actually pain is coming out in weird ways, but we're addressing that. And I think that, in the long term, death and how we grieve is actually the last thing that connects us all, and it's actually going to be kind of the thing that saves us from ourselves if we can connect ourselves with a better relationship to death.

And if we can do that, then I think we'll be okay, and I really think we can do that. And it's all about instead of someone s- fighting with someone else online, it's like these are grievers, and grief's coming out in very weird ways. And the last thing I'll, I'll explain is, in the survey, one of the questions was, "If you're actively grieving and you wanna share more, please share more."

And on the quiz box, we [00:29:00] left, like, this tiny little amount of space, and people were posting, like, paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs. So to us, that was, my God, people need someone to talk to, right? Maybe they're not in therapy anymore, and what they end up having nowhere to put this, so they show up and say, "I hate your post," or y- you know, something like that.

And, and I think it's just, to your point, I think it is maybe... I don't know if it's coincidence or if it's just actually serendipitous, but at this very moment, in some ways, we're at our worst as people. But also, in some ways, we're at our best as people, because I come on here, and I know without a doubt you and I are gonna get along because you're in the end of life space.

And when you meet people in the end of life space, they're very, very good people. They're very kind people. They're very good communicators. And I just know we're gonna have a good time. So if you can find that connection with people, anyone, being a mirror for someone's grief can be an incredible, incredibly, [00:30:00] like, kind thing you can do for someone, because it ends up having nowhere to go.

Jill: Yeah, you said a lot of really good stuff in there. And it is, I think, a way that we are all so connected, right? Because we will all experience grief of some kind, right? Whether it's the death of a loved one, which, you know, either we're gonna die before them or they're gonna die before us, right? So most of us will experience the death of somebody that we really, really care about, and it is something that we all could connect on.

You know, 'cause again, it doesn't matter to me even if we believe things different spiritually or politically really especially. Mm-hmm. But, like, if we believe different things, in the long run when we lose somebody that we love, it is often complicated. 'Cause, you know, even like you mentioned about your mom, like, having said that to her when you were a child, then when they do die, sometimes there can be the [00:31:00] anger and the frustration of like, "They did this to themselves," even though I don't believe that.

Mm-hmm. In the long run we're all gonna die. All of us are doing things that are gonna potentially cause our death. Mm-hmm. But that doesn't mean that that's not the thought that we have- Mm-hmm ... of, like, anger and they, they did this to themselves, and I told them, and whatever else, while also feeling that sadness and that loss.

And so we do all connect on that same level. And this idea too of people grieving- Being more easily triggered and more easily able to get into fights and arguments with people. I'm sure that's probably even in real life, right? Not just online. It's probably a similar thing. Mm-hmm. And so many of us are walking around really kind of full of grief.

Mm-hmm. And not even realizing in some cases that that's what it is. You know, I think back to when I did my death doula training, and I started learning about how, you know, if we don't process grief, like, we really will kind of hold it. Mm-hmm. [00:32:00] And I started thinking about the fact that, like, when my grandfather died, I was only four years old, and he kinda just, like, went to the hospital, and then he was gone, and he never came back, and I didn't go to, like, the funeral.

And he was also not just was it, like, my grandfather died, but he was, like, my main male figure in my life. Aw. So then I lost that as well. And so I can really look back at those two losses in my life at four years old and kind of, like, see the trail of, like, things that happened, things that I did, right?

Choices that I made, situations that I got into that really were tied to that, and the fact that I was really grieving, and I didn't ever know it. And I used to... I would get into fights even when I was a kid. I was, like, fist-fighting people on the playground. Oh. Right? Like, and I'm only like five foot four.

But I never understood where this anger would come from. [00:33:00] Mm-hmm. And as you're saying that, I'm like, "Oh, well, of course. That totally makes sense." Mm-hmm. And so we're all walking around holding this grief, and if we could look at people and just see that, would we show up with more patience? Would we show up with more kindness?

Would we show up with more understanding? And I know, like, in Buddhism, I've heard this... I'm not gonna say it exactly right, but kind of like, when you meet every person, do you see them as dying just like you are? 

Sarah: Mm-hmm. And 

Jill: again, it kind of goes along with that grief. When we meet every person, do we see them as grieving just like we are?

Because if we could, I think it would make it a little bit easier for us to not get so upset. I feel like it's- Mm-hmm ... definitely changed me, you know, the way that- Mm-hmm ... I interact. I don't fight with people anywhere near as much as I used to online. No. Partially for my own mental health. I just... I can't do it.

Like, it, it makes me feel terrible for days typically- Yeah ... afterwards. 

Sarah: [00:34:00] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, same. I, I'm been so busy. Thankfully, I have no time for that. And, and I think in, when we're building it, Restfully, it's kind of like, how do we show up for those people who are still right there? And actually, one of the funny marketing ideas we've been playing around with is going and putting comments exactly in the middle of fights that just say, so go on whitehouse.gov or whatever, or on, you know, the president's Instagram account and wherever people are mad.

And instead of saying like, "I agree with this," or, "I disagree with this," saying, "91% of people who are angry online self- self-identify as grieving. If you're looking for grief support, come to Restfully." Ah. And, you know, we were joking, like that's like entering a gun fight without a- Like, I don't, you know, like, all right, I don't wanna get like canceled by everyone.

It is really true. Like, if you can break this looping cycle of I'm angry, I'm angry, I'm angry, it's like, wait, [00:35:00] are you angry or are you sad or are you confused or are you worried or something? And I think that's what the internet unfortunately does is loops people. But then the internet also finds people like you, and so it can be good.

It's all about how you use it. 

Jill: Hmm. Yeah, actually, I really kind of like that idea of going on and doing that because sometimes it does just take that one little thing to, like you said, kind of like break that loop, break that cycle. And I even had a post once ... 'Cause, I mean, part of why I don't post more on social media is because I've found that anytime I post something that gets a lot of views and a lot of likes or whatever else, then it also gets a lot of comments.

And I don't have the bandwidth to like deal with the comments, right? Mm-hmm. Like, even the positive ones. If there's a lot of them, I try to [00:36:00] always like interact with it. Mm-hmm. And then if you're gonna get positive, you're also gonna get negative, right? 

Sarah: Yes. 

Jill: And so often the negative ones, it feels like a lot of the time it's- It's that they misunderstood what I was saying, and then I feel the need to try to, like, explain it deeper, and it c- it just becomes a whole thing.

And so one time last year, I posted something on my YouTube, and I got a lot of comments, and I just kept responding with the same thing, "Thank you so much for your comment." Mm-hmm. "I really appreciate it." And then, like- Mm-hmm ... just leaving it at that. But then after, like, doing that, like, five times, they're like, nobody responded to it.

What were they gonna respond, right? Like, they- Uh-huh, uh-huh ... couldn't go back and forth with me when that's all that I said. And so it was just, like, this way to, like, break that cycle, because of course I wanted to go on and, like, respond- Mm-hmm ... and say something, and then I was like, "Thanks for the comment." I mean, I just...

I don't know how some people do it, 'cause you're right. Like, you can get in there, and you could post those, [00:37:00] and I'm sure a lot of people will love it, and then there'll be other people that'll be like, "How dare you come on here and market yourself?" Yes, 

Sarah: yes. 

Jill: Like, we're just all marketing ourself online at this point.

That's all that online is, it feels like, at this point. 

Sarah: Yeah. A- and I, I think, kinda to your point, I, I get used to the, to it with thick skin. The one that really does just hurt my feelings because it's just so h- almost hilariously opposite of how we've been is, "I can't believe you're trying to capitalize on people's grief."

Oh, yeah. And it just hurts my feelings. It's just someone who's, has their shackles up, and they're worried, and they're defensive because there are plenty of people who are trying to capitalize on grief in different, weirder ways, and maybe, you know, that's a thing and we should be concerned about it. But yeah, that one, you know, comments about you're capitalizing on grief, that one just hurts my feelings.

And the way we always talk about it at Restfully is, both internally and externally, is are you rounding up on the person? If you round up on people- Mm ... you see a lot better [00:38:00] than if you round down on people. Could this just be someone who's sad? Could this just be someone who's hurt? What are the factors to that?

Lots of rounding up. The internet could definitely help with a little rounding up, because then when I get a comment that says, "Are you just capitalizing on people's grief?" And just to be clear, we have so many free grief resources. We want to be incredibly generous with grief resources. When we talk about the business, we talk about there are probably ways to make money by helping people who are planning and aging and things like that, so that we can be very, very generous with people who are grieving.

But when they say that, I just think, "Okay, I have to round up. This is a person who's probably been hurt by a bunch of stuff, and it's okay. I'm just gonna keep, keep rounding up on people." But yeah, I mean, the internet, it's scary, so I'm scared to do the comment thing. But maybe I'll take your positive feedback and jump into the unfight a little bit.

Jill: Especially right now, because so many people are afraid, and they are suffering, and [00:39:00] if we could be that- And that is what I try to remind myself too, is like, of course I will get some negative comments every time I post, but there'll be other people out there that really needed to see what I posted. But again, I don't know.

I don't really have much time. And that's part of the thing too, is like I get that same type of comment as a death doula, right? Like the death doula community. Mm-hmm. We see this a lot. We also see it from within our community- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm ... of like other death doulas that are like, "We should be doing this work for free."

Sarah: Uh, 

Jill: yeah. Okay, sure. But also You know, I have been trying now to make enough money on my business so that I didn't have to go back to work. Well, you know what? Now I went back to work, and I have a lot less time to do this work because I'm working now literally, like, four different part-time jobs on top.

Yeah. I can barely keep up with the podcast. This past weekend, for the first time, I almost didn't put one out because it was Sunday morning and I hadn't even [00:40:00] edited it yet. And so I don't ever wanna give up the podcast, but if I needed to take on more work, I would have to. This is my free labor. I don't make any money off of it.

Anything, I pay to create the podcast, but I like to have this resource for people to be able to hear the conversations, find the resources, find out all the information. And I do also have free resources and things on my website, but if we don't charge the money, we live in a society where we need money.

Mm-hmm. And so we can't do the work without also charging people. Like- Mm-hmm ... I would love to give it all away for free and still be able to pay my bills and feed my family, but this past January, my husband and I sat down, and he was like, "You need to make more money." Like, it's been six years almost. Mm-hmm.

Like, we can't keep doing this. And so I had to make the choice to go out and find some part-time work. It's a balance in making the money and also serving people, [00:41:00] but the reality is, like, sure, shame on us for making money off people's grief or making money off people's death, but if we didn't make money, we couldn't do it.

So, like, what do you want us to do, right? Like 

Sarah: Yes. 

Jill: We don't have a choice. 

Sarah: Yeah. I, I couldn't agree more, and I think kind of that inside the community, being pretty tough on each other is one of the harder parts of it. And I think there's a lot of progress that can happen there specifically. And again, we're, you know, we're...

Last year, when we were launching, we were fundraising, and I met people to help join and bring our vision to life, and I was out networking and talking to people, and very frequently, people would say, "Oh, I should introduce you to this guy I know. He owns a bunch of hospice facilities," or, "He owns a bunch of funeral homes."

And so you go and you find out that there are people in this industry who are making a ton of money, and there are systems in this industry that are absolutely [00:42:00] not saving people money when they could be. And yet we have this collective people who work at the very last stage with the people who are actually dying, and we tell them, "If you're not prepared for this to be volunteer work, and if you're trying to make a living off this, then go somewhere else."

So it's this problem that one of the things we're adding a feature to our website that we call the solution database. So if you came in and you said, "Here's my problem," we- you'll have solutions. So in my example, if I'm planning a funeral for my mom, it would show me people who understand how to plan funerals, all these different resources that I didn't even know or think existed.

So we're curating those in one spot, and then same deal. I really wanna highlight end of life professionals and doulas, both in person and remote, because I guarantee there are people on Earth at this very moment who would incredibly benefit from a call from you. It's just about where are they gonna find you.

Mm-hmm. And unless they stumble across you, it's hard to tell, are you someone they'd wanna [00:43:00] talk to? Do other people trust you? Are you actually gonna answer? Are they gonna be able to afford you? You know, so there's this gap between people need things and people offer things, and the problem isn't that you shouldn't pay for things that you offer Or you want, it's that we can't find the right people.

If you... I suspect, and I don't wanna put words into your mouth, if you had a whole clientele and you're making a fantastic living supporting people in end of life, which is a stage that you could absolutely make a living, people need you for, if you were doing so and you were getting 20% of your calls were people saying, "Hey, I have no money, but I need help," I don't wanna presume, but I would guess you'd say, "No problem.

I'm more than happy to help you with a ton of my free time," very, very generously. So again, that's one of the things we're trying to do with Restfully is make resources so you can find people for all these different problems. We include doulas in that, and include a scholarship. 'Cause what, a lot of times you'll see with doulas, they'll say, [00:44:00] "I work on a sliding scale."

But if I were to call you, it can be really hard because you're trying to learn about me, but you're also kind of trying to learn about how much you could charge me that would be fair and reasonable. And so there's this weird double dance that's happening where you're learning how can you support me, what do I need, and also I'm kind of telling you how can I support you and what can I pay you.

And if we just can lock it in where it's saying, "Look, if you're in our network, we're gonna give 20% of people who come through who tell us that they need scholarships. We'll do the vetting. We'll send people to you and say, 'Look, this one's on us. We'll pay for it,' because they're coming through our network.

You can keep charging your price. You won't know the difference. They'll get the same quality of service." And then it's a system where everyone can have access. But maybe we need to figure out how we can get 80% of it for people, but we're working in the system of how can we make sure that the very, very, very generous people who are generous with their hearts and their time don't have to be generous with their money as [00:45:00] well, because the world needs people like you to be doing this full time.

And it's, I genuinely believe it's better for everyone if you are. It just, obviously not for your bank account if you can't make a real living off of it. So we're, that's part of what we're set out to do and, and one of the challenges for me with the word doula is it's kind of like, well, what is that?

What does that person do? And so that's why we're kind of angling towards this solution database. If someone said, "Oh my God, my mom just was diagnosed with terminal illness" Mm ... then it's like, okay, do you want someone who will come to the hospital with you? Do you wanna talk to someone about hospice, how to pick hospice?

Do you want someone who will empty her apartment for you? Do you want someone who knows your family? Do you want counseling? There are all these things, so we're kind of like chopping up the actual titles and saying, okay, ca- who can help with this? Who can do this? So that you aren't just picking by a title, and I think it doesn't do doulas enough of a service- Mm

to explain, like, [00:46:00] "I'm a doula." And it's like, that's awesome. What exactly is that, and when do I call you? And what, how much do you cost, and all of that. And so that's part of what we're trying to fix, is like, okay, if you want someone to come to the hospital with you, it costs this much an hour. I can be there on this schedule.

I can advocate. If you guys wanna do a family call, we're all talking about what's happening with her body and what's gonna happen next, that's great. Here's what it's gonna cost. If you can't afford that, here's a video that I highly recommend. We're trying to make every step of the way, so if people wanna talk to someone, they can, and that if they need resources and they can't afford it, that there's always something they can do, including all the way to full scholarship, where we just unlock it and pay for whatever resources they need.

Jill: Yeah, I love that idea of like what is it that you're looking for? Because, yeah, that is the biggest hurdle. It feels like even though now people are starting to hear of doulas, it's like nobody understands it, and it is so hard to explain to somebody [00:47:00] what I do when we're starting at kind of like nothing but confusion.

And I'm like, all right, so this is what I do. It's a whole thing. So I like that, of more like what is it you need, and then a doula might be the perfect person for you, 'cause- Yeah ... 'cause I think that's why a lot of people also don't find us, because they don't know that they need us. They don't know what they're looking for.

They don't know that somebody exists that can help them with all the things that they're looking for. So that's a- Yeah ... really cool idea. 

Sarah: I think that's part of it, is like if you can help the people. So we are working with a really large organizational company, so they can help if there's aging people, they can help with that.

You know, doulas can help with that. You know, all these people can help with all these things, and it's just about finding the right people at, at the right time when you need them. And part of it is when you're in crisis, it's not really the great, greatest time to start doing market research on, okay, here, let me interview 10 doulas.

[00:48:00] Like- Yeah ... what are my options? It's just like, okay, w- who can sit with my family member while I- Go to my doctor's appointment, right? Like, that simple, and you can find that. But that's what we're trying to make easier. And then my hope is that for the people who are so generous with their time and their expertise, like Pajelas, we can help them actually reverse engineer their perfect life of, okay, well, at, on these days I'm available to do these things, and then we can help them get those bookings.

Jill: I love it. That's amazing. Yeah. I think we are at the end of our time, 'cause it flies by. Oh, no. So let's hear where people can find you. I'll put links in the show notes, but if they wanna reach out to you, where should they reach out if they want more info? 

Sarah: All right, so our website is restfullycare.com, and if you wanna know specifically about grief personas, then you can go to griefpersonas.com.

And if anyone wants to get in touch with me directly, it's pretty easy. I am [00:49:00] sarah@restfullycare.com, and I'd love to hear from people if you have advice and suggestions or feedback. All that's incredibly welcome, or if I can help with anything. 

Jill: Thank you so much, Sarah. Yeah. Thank you so much. This was lovely.

I enjoyed it. 

Sarah: Yeah, me too. You make it so fun and easy. 

Jill: I try. Yeah. Considering it's a very heavy topic- Mm-hmm ... I try to make it easy and kinda fun and light-hearted, so thank you. 

Sarah: Thank you. Thanks for having me. 

Jill: If you've been listening to my podcast for a while and you hear me and my guests talk over and over about how important it is to create a plan for the end of life and to have the conversations with your loved ones about what's important to you, and you're thinking, "Okay, maybe it's time.

Maybe I should actually sit down and figure this out instead of just hoping it all works out later," I get it. These conversations can feel overwhelming or scary or just like something you'll deal with another day, but you don't have to do it alone. If you want help creating an end of life care plan for yourself or for someone you love, maybe it's your aging parents, a spouse, whoever it is in your life, you can book a [00:50:00] complimentary 30-minute call with me and we'll just talk.

We'll get clear on what's going on for you and what the next right steps might be. There's no pressure, just support. The link's in the show notes whenever you're ready. And if this episode made you think of someone, a sibling, a friend, or another caregiver, feel free to share it with them. Sometimes these conversations are easier to start when someone else opens the door first.

Thank you for being here. The fact that you're even willing to listen to this kind of conversation means 

a lot.